Attacking Type Effectiveness

Okay, as some of you know (from the brief period of time I went on the Smogon chat, or from people like Mekkah posting it on the boards), I am currently researching a way of making Pokemon on a more balanced footing with each other. Today, after continuing this research, I managed to produce this little chart which has interesting consequences to the current OU metagame, and so I'm posting it here.

As you know, some attack types are 'better' than others. This means that some particular types hit a wider range of Pokemon for more damage than other types. The Poison type, for instance, is usually referred to be a 'bad' attacking type, because it is easily resisted and is only super effective against one type. The Rock type, on the other hand, is considered a much better attacking type since, among other reasons, it hits 4 different types for supereffective and is only resisted by 3 types.

These are the things that make an attacking type 'good' or 'bad':

The type's attacking type chart

The prevalence, or otherwise, of certain Pokemon in the metagame

The defensive stats of the Pokemon being hit

Because of this, I calculated the following parameter for each and every Pokemon, and each and every type (actually, the computer did it for me!):

TypeEffectiveness is the usual: 2 if hit for supereffective, 1 if hit for neutral, etc.

Usage is taken from Shoddybattle's statistics. I used the unweighted ones here, and I divided the unweighted usage by the total number of usages. I only used the statistics for final evolution Pokemon.

Look at the first two numbers: 70302 and 71050. 70302 is the Ice Physical Attacking Type Effectiveness (Ice PATE for short) and 71050 is the Ice Special Attacking Type Effectiveness (Ice SATE for short).

The lower the type's PATE or SATE, the better that type is for attacking purposes. This means that Ice is the best attacking type, and Poison is the worst.

But now comes the interesting bit! PATE and SATE can be used for an extremely neat calculation: the average damage you deal with a particular move against ALL (fully evolved) Pokemon.

This means that Flare Blitz will deal an average of 95% to 112% damage. Of course, this doesn't imply that Infernape will OHKO every Pokemon in the game with CB Flare Blitz, but that if you were to use Flare Blitz against every Pokemon in the game and averaged out the damage dealt to each, the average damage would end up to be 95% to 112% (keeping also in mind that Pokemon like Bronzong, Forretress, Weavile and Metagross - all weak to Fire - are all more common than, say, Charizard, Snorlax, Milotic and Slowbro).

Note that these percentages are approximate, since we took the average defensive EVs for all Pokemon, and also we're assuming the Pokemon usages up until December. This means that the PATE and SATE lists depend on the metagame, and hence will inevitably change as the metagame changes.

The chart has a lot of interesting things that can be commented on, but I'll leave that fun part up to you, for now. It's already past midnight here, and I need to sleep.

I bet you didn't take into consideration Pokemon abilities, tho. That will throw a lot of these numbers off, especally things like Levitate, Water Absorb, Thick Fat, etc.

I would not expect Ice to be on top. It is true that there are a lot of dragon Pokemon that are 4x weak to ice, but there are way more water Pokemon out there that will be strong to ice, or 4x strong to Ice. I find that hard to believe.

Ice has always been king, because it's the kryptonite of so many otherwise amazing pokemon. Beyond the obvious 4x dragons, it also shuts down a number of things that are otherwise merely "solid" (bulky grounds, for instance).

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Heh, this is great. One interesting point however...Flying is the the second best physical attacking type? That certainly is a surprise to me.

I guess more Brave Bird/Drill Peck sets should be considered? This could mean that Swords Dance Empoleon with Drill Peck, or Choice Band Honchkrow could be viable metagame Pokemon.

An important catch, however, is that going by these strict parameters would mean Dragon is just average. I would have assumed with the ability to hit 15 out of 17 types for neutral damage, and with such moves as Outrage and Dracometeor, that it is better than. Perhaps the formula should include a check for quality of moves? Having a 120 BP physical and 140 BP special move that is effective against 16 out of 17 types needs to be emphasized a bit more.

Indeed, the chart above only goes half-way in the calculation. Ice is without a doubt the best attack (Ice Beam hits 95 BP), but the reason why ground and fighting are the next best is simply because they have 100+ BP attacks with perfect accuracy.

I'm surprised to see flying so high, I expected it pretty high myself but 3rd on that chart? Nonetheless, with the best attack being Brave Bird... we've got a slight problem. Flying's best attacks are Brave Bird, Air Slash and Aerial Ace. No one except Togekiss and Yanmega learns Air Slash, Brave Bird hurts yourself and Aerial Ace does crap damage. Thats why it isn't used so much, even though it is clearly one of the most reliable attack types out there.

Drill Peck would be nice if pokemon actually learned that attack as well.

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Normal has to be rated higher IMO... Return is the most powerful attack without any drawbacks (it has perfect accuracy, 102 BP, and everyone can learn it). Facade is the most powerful attack in the metagame... so crazy that Guts Ursaring can friggen 2-hit KO Bronzong with Facade, and OHKO after a swords dance.

The problem I see with this chart is that the excess damage that many 4x attacks and some 2x attacks do is not taken into account. Sure, Ice hits a lot of pokémon for 4x and 2x damage, but in many cases, that 4x is an overkill of immense proportions. On the other hand, while Dragon will only hit 2x against other dragons, it will deal very high amounts of damage to many poémon. And once you reach 100% damage, it doesn't matter if it could have done 500% damage or just 100.01%.

As a curiosity, and as something to base some discussions on, I think this chart is great, but I don't see it being very applicable.

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I noticed that everything is sorted correctly on the physical side, and most of the special side fits into that same arrangement. Water and Ghost, however, are better on the special side than the physical side.

While these types of calculations may be useful for "choosing the safest option" and whatnot, predicting what your opponent will do and either using a move that will beat that specific pokemon, or double-switching to an appropriate counter will always net you a larger advantage than, say, spamming Draco Meteor.

EDIT: Aldaron, for what it's worth, Swords Dance/Drill Peck/Waterfall/Aqua Jet Empoleon hits neutral on everything not named Dialga or other Empoleons. Flying is rated so high because it hits so much for neutral while only being resisted by 2 types, I think. I run Swords Dance Skarmory with Brave Bird as its only attack, and it's proven to be quite effecctive.

Can someone explain to my ignorant mind how this helps...I'm trying hard to get where this would come in handy but I just can't figure it out. I want to just bash it but I must be overlooking something, so anyone care to explain to a simpleton here?

I noticed that everything is sorted correctly on the physical side, and most of the special side fits into that same arrangement. Water and Ghost, however, are better on the special side than the physical side.

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Actually, only Fire is better as a Special attack than a Physical one.

The problem I see with this chart is that the excess damage that many 4x attacks and some 2x attacks do is not taken into account. Sure, Ice hits a lot of pokémon for 4x and 2x damage, but in many cases, that 4x is an overkill of immense proportions. On the other hand, while Dragon will only hit 2x against other dragons, it will deal very high amounts of damage to many poémon. And once you reach 100% damage, it doesn't matter if it could have done 500% damage or just 100.01%.

As a curiosity, and as something to base some discussions on, I think this chart is great, but I don't see it being very applicable.

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The problem with that approach is that you would have to set a specific attacking stat to base the comparison on. Do you choose a stat like Blissey's attack to use, or do you use Attack-form Deoxys? And what about STAB? That would certainly affect the calculations.

The problem is that setting a specific Attack to use depends on what Pokemon you want to use, something that is very specific. This list is just trying to get a generally picture for how each type works individually in terms of effectiveness against other Pokemon.

Actually, STAB isn't a bad idea to try. I'd like to see how STABed attacks compare to unSTABed. If my assumption about how this is calculated is right, a STABed, physical Normal attack would rank at 68916, better than a physical Ice attack in terms of overall damage.

I wonder how well an ice/fire/flying/rock moveset would work out (since those are the top 4 types). The only one I could see using that kind of set effectively would be some kind of mix Dragonite .

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You're applying this wrong. This list is considering each type's effectiveness as a standalone basis, not in combination. Attempting to form a moveset from this would be ignoring things like overlapping type coverage.

For example, that type combination cannot hit Electric, Water, Rock, Normal, Ghost, Dark, Poison, and Psychic for super effective damage, most of which are fairly common types. Granted, it isn't resisted by single type that I can see (and I don't think any combinations), but it seems to be somewhat inferior coverage, especially if you would be giving up STAB for it.